The Neurotic Prufrock: A Lacanian Reading of Eliot‘s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Neurotic Prufrock: A Lacanian Reading of Eliot‘s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Summary/Abstract: T. S. Eliot‘s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock as a modern poem is rich enough to be studied in the light of different critical theories. Dealing with dream, identity, language and relationship with maternal and paternal worlds, the poem seems suitable for an indepth examination of J. Alfred Prufrock‘s disturbed mind and thoughts, to be read in the light of Lacan‘s theories on the imaginary and symbolic orders of the language. This article investigates Prufrock‘s incomplete experience of the lack as well as his entrapment between the two mentioned orders and argues that signs of neurosis can be found in Prufrock: his half-castration and obsession. The article concludes that by not being recognized by others in a slave-master dialectic relationship and ignorant of the symbolic order or the law of the Father, Prufrock is doomed to total oblivion or drowning in the sea where he can find himself released from the cruelty of signifiers and signifieds.

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